Student Senate

We had an amazing Student Senate meeting last Tuesday. For those of you unfamiliar with the group, Student Senate is open to any and all MMSD high schoolers. We meet every other Tuesday to discuss student-related issues in the school district, and ways that we, as students, can get more of a say.

This year is an extremely important one for the future of students. Last year, under the leadership of the new superintendent Dan Nerad, the school board and community embarked on a process called The Strategic Plan. Though it sounds kind of technical and formal, the strategic plan is essentially the "paper copy" of all of the goals for our school district--- what we want to acheive, and how we're going to do it.

A big theme in the process last year was the achievement gap. Why it occurs, and how we can work to close it. As you can see from the mission statement (top of this webpage), closing the achievement gap and providing OUTSTANDING EDUCATION TO ALL STUDENTS is the purpose of our schools.

Sounds impossible, right? Well, the strategic plan is broken into many sections, each of which have specific goals and ways to implement them. Three of the "action" plans are: Staff to Student Relationships, Staff Retention (how we hire/keep our teachers!) and Curriculum.

At Student Senate last week, we broke into groups and read these plans, learning how the district plans to improve relationships within schools, hire qualified and diverse teachers, and provide a stimulating and contemporary curriculum. Wow, that's basically everything that determines whether or not students have a good experience at school (Yeah, okay, all that AND the caliber of the cafeteria food).

We had some really great discussions in our groups, and while we found a lot we liked in the district's plan, we also found a lot we thought could be improved. Sometimes, the language was vague and we felt the plan's goals were misaligned. The group I was in that dealt with Relationships thought that communication was the key to this goal. We feel that our schools really need to teach both students and staff how to communicate so they can better express what they need to help their instruction and learning.

We'll continue our discussion next meeting, December 8th, at 6 in the Doyle Building on Dayton Street. Anyone is welcome!